


Bringing Home the Rain

by nicotinedragon



Category: Invisible Inc. (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Gen, Suicide Idealization
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-19
Updated: 2015-10-19
Packaged: 2018-04-27 02:47:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5030731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nicotinedragon/pseuds/nicotinedragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Decker's years of alcoholism are starting to catch up with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bringing Home the Rain

 

A young woman stands up. She looks like she’d been through the wringer, “My name is Ruth and I’m an alcoholic.”

 

“Hello, Ruth.” I said with everyone else. She wears a white dress that contrasts startlingly with her black coffee appearance. She wears heavy makeup to cover up a black eye, “My last drink was three months ago.”

 

The church erupts into cheers. I clap politely. It seems kind of exclusive to be doing this in a church, but that’s just me. Jesus looks down at me sadly from his cross; I don’t like that pitying gaze he’s giving me.

 

Because of work, I rarely go to the same meetings. I rarely go to meetings, period. Generally only when I messed up. I messed up pretty bad.

 

“I have some bad news for the friends that I know…” She looks around at what I assume are the old-timers, “And maybe for the friends I haven’t met, yet.” She smiles hopefully, sadly, at me.

 

I try to smile back and I think it makes her uncomfortable.

 

She chokes a bit, looking down, “My mother passed away last week. Acute liver failure due to excessive drinking. She was forty-eight years old.”

 

Damn. Just ten years older than me.

 

“I’m so tired. I love to drink. It relieves my anxiety, gets me to sleep, and makes me social. I don’t enjoy things unless I’ve been drinking.”

 

She sits back down. Someone holds her hand and she leaned on him. Now I feel even worse.

 

“My condolences. Ruth’s mother could be any of us,” says the person with the southern accent. They hide their face with a cowboy hat; I didn’t know people even still wore those.

 

I coughed and sniffed again; my nose was running, “Maybe you’re an introvert. People take your energy.”

 

Ruth looks at me, “But I love people!”

 

“Introverts aren’t anti-social. Being around people is exhausting, right?”

 

“Everything’s exhausting, now.” She replies.

 

We talk about her problems for a while, the cowboy quotes the Bible a few times, reads a few passages. I never really got religion, but hey, maybe it helped.

 

“Anybody else?” The cowboy asks. I raise my hand. It doesn’t shake, not yet. I stand up. I sniff and cough. I don’t know what to say, but I have to say something. Something bad is about to happen, had already happened. I have to say something.

 

Everyone looks at me expectantly, burning holes in my clothes. They try to look helpful, friendly even. They don’t. If we couldn’t help ourselves, who the hell could we help?

 

“Hi. My name is Brian and I’m an alcoholic.” I prefer the term ‘drunk’. Drunk, wino, boozer, lush, sot, carouser, sponge, souse, bum, inebriate.

 

There are a lot of words to describe an alcoholic.

 

There’s something very clinical about being an alcoholic as opposed to a drunk. A drunk has a personality trait. An alcoholic has a medical condition. Drunks are fun people that show you a good time; alcoholics are tragic and cause problems for everyone. Guess which one describes me at the moment.

 

“Hi, Brian!” Everyone says, many of them cheerfully.

 

“I came here because a friend said it’d be a good idea. I’ve been sober for…hell, I’m not sober now.” I laugh. I had downed my entire flask in the parking lot. I didn’t want to be in public when the tremors started. Oh, yeah, I started getting tremors, now.

 

“We all got to start somewhere.” The cowboy was apparently the leader, here.

 

“I had my first beer when I was…” It was hard to remember, “I think I was eight. Parents thought it was hilarious, get the kid and the dog drunk.” Good old Hemmingway; that dog could hold his liquor, “I started drinking on my own when I was sixteen…been a pretty wild ride ever since ….lost my job, my wife, my car, my house….yeah.”

 

My sob story sucked me into a dark mood and the alcohol swishing around in my gut held me there.

 

“Well, I can look past you showing up drunk;” Everyone else nodded, “the important thing is you showed up at all.” The cowboy spat dip into a soda can, “What made you want to change?”

 

I wipe my nose on my sleeve, “Because I failed.”

 

And helped bring about the end of the world. There was that.

 

“Setbacks are normal.” They reply, “Jesus fell three times on his way to Calvary.”

 

The religious-minded among them nod again and I feel like I’m in church. I actually am in a church, at this meeting. I envy their faith. They have somebody to meet on the other side.

 

“I’ve fallen more than that. Anyway, I was on a five-day bender, just now stopped being too sick to get out of bed. My boss told me to check into rehab.”

 

She found out I was sneaking liquid courage on missions. She wasn’t happy, so she gave me my options. The other option was letting Sharp implant something in my stomach so that alcohol would make me sick. No thanks. The last thing I want is that guy standing over me with a scalpel while I’m unconscious.

 

I come to these meetings the same way nonbelievers go to church, rarely and because someone makes them go. Another reason I still come to these damned meetings was to hear how badly other people messed up. I can’t be doing that bad if other people were doing worse, right?

 

“Well, you in rehab now?” Didn’t AA count? I guess not.

 

I sniff, “Nope. I had it under control for a while. I started up last weekend, normally, nothing too heavy, but I wouldn’t stop.”

 

And that was scary.

 

Since that last mission, when Incognita turned on us, I hadn’t stopped drinking. The apocalypse works up a thirst, “I was getting to about half in the bag. I think I was only really bent once or twice. Only this time, I couldn’t make myself stop.”

 

I pretty much blew through my entire paycheck. Capitalism didn’t stop just because the world had ended. SecNet going away didn’t stop the world the way a natural disaster would, not all at once, anyway. People were scared, communication was difficult, but everything else still worked, more or less. Incognita has either not bothered to stop commerce or she hasn’t gotten around to it. Why bother?

 

She’s a god and we’re self-absorbed ants. If she had anything planned for her ant farm, she hasn’t done it yet. Maybe she wants to see how we wiped each other out in the face of her oblivion. Now, that would be something to watch. We were all waiting for the other shoe to drop, for her to just kill us all and start over. And with that hanging over our heads, I decided, why not beat her to it? Die on my own terms. At least I’m being proactive about what we all have to go through, eventually.

 

I continue, “Even when I was drinking, I knew something was wrong. The withdrawals got bad. I couldn’t even wean myself off. Then I got scared, so I drank more. Yesterday, I woke up and my eyes were swollen shut. Had to have my boss come get me. She had to buy me some drinks so I could even function.” I laughed, looking down at my empty flask, “Kinda scared what’s going to happen when this alcohol wears off.”

 

The cowboy whistles, “That’s bad. You got a rough couple days ahead of you.”

 

“Gee, thanks, sheriff.”

 

They nod, “You got a sense of humor, good. Going to need that where you’re going.”

 

I’ve already been through hell and helped bring about the apocalypse. What happened to me personally couldn’t be all that bad.

 

Someone, a woman that used to be pretty before someone rearranged her face, “You need to check into a hospital.”

 

“I can’t. SecNet’s still malfunctioning.”

 

Everyone muttered and shuffled uncomfortably. Most of these people don’t have any enhancements; they spent their credits on booze. But even these winos had people that had some sort of upgrade. With SecNet ‘down’, everyone was scared.

 

That’s what corporate had said, anyway, or whoever was acting in their place. SecNet had a malfunction and other networks were standing up to pick up the slack. Nothing to worry about; nothing to see here. Just moving some data; we meant to do that. Move the eggs to several different baskets instead of just one. Records and data were being lost in the rearrangement. Please bear with us; thank you for your patience. I think Incognita is laughing at our efforts to reorganize.

 

Nobody could blame me for wanting a drink. There were probably more than a few here that had also taken the bottle back.

 

“They still doing emergency services. I think you can still get in.” A man adds, he might have been handsome before he and someone else destroyed him with chemicals and violence.

 

“People with malfunctioning enhancements are going to beat me out of a bed. I have to do this alone.”

 

“You’re not actually alone, are you?”

 

“No, no, I still have friends.”

 

“You still have us.” The cowboy smiled hopefully.                                                                                  

 

I’m jolted from this conversation with the last of the alcohol leaving my liver and replacing it with pure crystalline, heart-stopping panic. I clutch at my heart, “Oh, shit. Here it comes.”

 

The cowboy stands up and everyone looks like they’re about to pounce on me. I start shaking, my throat locks up. I’m convinced I’m about to die.

 

“I think I’m having a heart attack….”

 

“Take this. You need it more than I do.” Someone pushes a water bottle and a little teal pill into my hands. Without asking what it is, I down it.

 

Luckily, the cowboy asks for me, “What the hell did you just give him?!”

 

“Diazepam. He needs it a hell of a lot more than I do.”

 

“That eats at the liver!”

 

“He’s not going to need his liver if he dies of a seizure first!”

 

“Let’s get you into detox.” The two of them lift me by my elbows. I can barely walk from the shakes. They lead me outside. The fresh air helps, but the sun burns at me. I smash my hat down over my head.

 

“C-Call Central. In my contacts. I…got a warrant.”

 

The man understands and grabs my phone, looking through the contact list. He gets a hold of Central, explaining, trying to convince her to check me into a hospital. It doesn’t work.

 

I grit my teeth and try to hold on until the diazepam kicks in. Acid reflux burns up my throat. The cowboy sits me down and tries to keep me calm. Shit, I don’t even know these people and they’re trying to help.

 

“Someone’s coming to pick him up.”

 

The cowboy is walking me through breathing exercises. In, two, three. Out, two, three.

 

It sort of works.

 

“Some woman said she was sending a doctor. Told her what I gave him. She said liver enzymes burn through sedatives in a flash.”

 

“We know all about that, don’t we?”

 

I feel like I’m being torn apart by dogs. I’m sweating through my coat and I tear it off. I think I start screaming. The cowboy trades their hat for mine. The wider brim kind of helped.

 

I really don’t want to be in a church parking lot when the pink elephants showed up.

 

The drugs kick in and I fall asleep.

 

I wake up in Hell.

 

Not literally, of course, but I won’t know that until later. I stop breathing, start again. I hallucinate worms moving through my veins. Once or twice I puke up blood, I think. All of my senses are ridiculously heightened; every little thing blasts me out of my stupor. I’m pretty damned sure I get violent.

 

Demons come at me with barbed knives. I go back to my training, catch the arm, break it, and then slam it down on the floor.

 

At one point, my entire nervous system is flooded with light and pain. My thoughts sparkle.

 

Every time I get to sleep, I feel like the worst is over. It’s not.

 

I start to think about things in that fevered way while my liver pays me back for all the abuse I heaped on it. I think about drinking on the beach as a kid, seeing an old fat drunk woman passed out while college kids laughed at her. Hemmingway lapped at my hands, wanting to play, while I watched this drunk woman turn lobster-red in the sun, her skin peeling and blistering. I didn’t want to be like that woman, even then, but I sure as shit didn’t want to be like those kids, either.

 

Maybe Incognita is right to just wipe us the fuck out and start over.

 

I think about my first drinking buddy, my dog. Good old Hemmingway. I wondered about all those artistic greats, Hemmingway, Thompson, Fitzgerald, van Gogh….did they drink to get in contact with the Muse or to shut her up?

 

I fall back asleep. I dream about being devoured by billions of ants, each one carving away a tiny little piece of flesh until I’m just bones.

 

I wake up beyond exhaustion and Xu gives me some electrolytes and something to make me sleep.

 

I have no idea how long this goes on.

 

I wake up at the headquarters with Xu sitting in a chair beside me. I’m in what looks like a hospital bed.

 

I tell him I’m suicidal. He tells me I broke Sharp’s arm for coming at me with a needle, so I can’t be that suicidal. I laugh. He doesn’t.

 

I ask, “Sharp’s arms are made of metal. How the fuck do you break metal arms?”

 

“You managed.” He says in that posh, matter-of-fact way of his, “You were so delirious you could have bent a steel bar. I knocked you out with a neural disrupter.”

 

Ah, the sparkly lights.

 

“…Can you please just kill me?” I finally ask.

 

“I can’t. We need you.” That’s supposed to make me feel better and it sort of does.

 

“Does he feel pain? Sharp?”

 

“He screamed like he did. Unless that was psychological, which is a _kind_ of pain.”

 

“Because he thinks it would hurt, it does hurt, got it.”

 

“The brain has a map of what it thinks the body looks like. Any discrepancy between the real thing and what the brain believes causes some very interesting psychological problems...” He goes on like this for a while. I tune him out and consider praying to someone. I’d take anybody at this point. What’s the second step, after admitting you have a problem? Praying to God, right?

 

“Is this ever going to fucking end?” I think I interrupt him. He doesn’t seem to mind.

 

“Delirium tremens? It lasts for about two or three days. You seem lucid now, so I think it’s over. You had a seizure in a church car park. Your anonymous friends had to come get us. They take the anonymous part very seriously, so I don’t know who they were, but they were very helpful.”

 

“You guys didn’t…do anything while I was out, did you?”

 

“You mean the stomach implant? I thought about it, but it would have been dangerous to perform surgery in your condition.”

 

“I don’t think I want to drink anymore.”

 

“That’s good.” I hate when non-addicts try to talk to an addict about addiction. This pencil-necked idiot probably thinks the problem’s solved. Addiction doesn’t work that way, poindexter, ask any smoker that’s ever died of lung cancer. He reaches into his pocket, “Here, I was told to give this to you.”

 

He hands me a metal poker chip. It has the serenity prayer on one side and the AA logo on the other, with ’24 hours’ stamped in the triangle.

 

“Huh.”

 

“One day at a time.” Xu reminds me. He pats me on the knee, “You can do this. Central wants to speak with you when you’re feeling up to it. She says she isn’t mad.”

 

He leaves.

 

The chip looks scratched, like it’s been held by a lot of hands, been in a lot of pockets. I feel it between my fingers, watch the light reflect. One day at a time. My nerves feel frayed; I’m still a basket-case.

 

But at least I don’t want anything to drink.

 

That’s a lie. I always want something to drink. The addiction’s not in the bottle; it’s in my head. I could be addicted to heroin, cocaine, holovids, or perfection. It’s all the same. We’re all after the same dopamine fix, the only thing humans actually like, when you get down to it. The poison’s in the dose. The delivery.

 

I’m going to screw up again, I already know that. I look at the coin, scratched and bent and beaten, but still shiny. 24 hours. One more day. I flip the coin and catch it, putting it in my pocket. I do my best to look presentable, then step outside to see what Central wants.

 


End file.
